Nova Scotia's Myopic Pursuit of Metals & Minerals (Part 2)

A Halifax Examiner / Cape Breton Spectator investigation. This is the second in a series of articles on the push for mines and quarries in Nova Scotia. You can find Part I here. Going for gold The CEO and chairman of Vancouver-based Atlantic Gold Corporation, Steven Dean, an Australian with a history of international coal and...

On Tuesday morning, I attended the media tour of Burnside jail with Tim. Tim summarized the tour this way: This was a PR exercise on the part of Corrections, and as such things go, was well-run. Corrections staff were informative and answered even the most pointed questions. Reporters did not, however, get the chance to […]

Nova Scotia's Myopic Pursuit of Metals & Minerals

A Halifax Examiner / Cape Breton Spectator investigation. Part 1: Welcome to the Gold Rush There’s a 21st century gold rush starting in Nova Scotia, just as industrial gold mining is increasingly coming into disrepute around the world. It has been described as an “environmental disaster” which often leads to contamination of water sources on […]

In which Stephen McNeil continues to be Stephen McNeil, dismissing calls to apologize to a young man for the province's own security failure. But there is also some small hint of change in the #metoo air. We take our good news where we find it.

Why am I not surprised? Last Monday, Halifax police dropped all charges against the 19-year-old they’d arrested less than a month before for “unauthorized use of a computer with fraudulent intent.” The fact is this case has been a cock-up from the beginning. Even before the beginning. Perhaps especially before the beginning. Let’s review. On...

Highlights of this article: • Provincial government employees who were made aware of the security failure with the Freedom of Information and Protection of Privacy (FOIPOP) website told Halifax police that the site had been “hacked” and that nearly 10,000 files “were taken” — which clearly overstated the nature of the case. • The 19-year-old […]

Here’s how we obtained the documents. First, a quick primer on search warrants. To get a search warrant, police have to go to a judge or Justice of the Peace and submit a document called an “Information To Obtain a Search Warrant,” or ITO. The ITO lays out the police investigation, what police know, and […]

"Many international companies believe we have resources off our coast that we have not tapped into," says Premier Stephen McNeil, "and we want the ability to do so." Forget the reality. And damn the consequences.

You can draw a neat, straight line. Start with the October 5, 1971, front page of the Halifax Chronicle Herald, with its photo of a beaming Premier Gerald Regan holding a tiny vial of oil supposedly sucked to the surface during offshore drilling off Nova Scotia. Above the photo across the entire top of the...

Last November, the QE2 Redevelopment Project very wisely conducted a survey of its staff, asking about how they get to and from work. I heard about the survey from a QE2 staffer, and immediately decided to ask for a look at the results. In Halifax, we don’t have too much in the way of detailed...

There's a clear public interest in knowing how well the province is protecting our personal data. So why are Liberal MLAs refusing to let the public accounts committee question witnesses about the latest data breaches?

Really? Of course, really. Last Wednesday, five Liberal MLAs — Gordon Wilson, Suzanne Lohnes-Croft, Ben Jessome, Brendan Maguire, and Hugh MacKay — voted, not with their minds, or their hearts, or their common sense, or even in the interests of the taxpayers who put them there, but in the craven service of their self-interested my-way-or-no-way...

Part 4: Message Control and the Northern Pulp Mill’s Cancer-Causing Air Emissions

Nova Scotia Lands, a provincial crown corporation charged with cleaning up Boat Harbour, played a role in silencing two Dalhousie University researchers whose work studied air pollution coming from the Northern Pulp mill, the Halifax Examiner has learned. In Part 3 of the Dirty Dealing series, I reported on the researchers’ 2017 ambient air study, which revealed...